1.The Bulgarian House on the Holy Mountain
The monastery is dedicated to St George and bears the epithet "Zograf" — "the painter" — from the legend that the saint's image painted itself on a blank panel in the newly founded church. The first document in which the house appears as Bulgarian is a receipt of 980 for the sale of land to the kellion of the Holy Apostles, signed in Bulgarian by the abbot Makarios. By the middle of the twelfth century at the latest, and certainly before 1169, St George Zograf was a Bulgarian monastery, considerably widening the Bulgarian spiritual presence on Athos.
All the monasteries of the Holy Mountain were considered royal — under the protection of the Byzantine emperors — and Zograf was under the patronage of the Bulgarian tsars. Its diptych preserves a list of Bulgarian rulers that historians still use today.
2.Ivan Asen II on Athos
The tsar who styled himself "tsar of the Bulgarians and Greeks" in 1230 could not break with the emperors' tradition of endowing the monasteries of the Holy Mountain. Probably in that same year Ivan Asen II visited the Athos peninsula and issued charters for Vatopedi, Iviron, Zograf, the Protaton and the Great Lavra; some semi-legendary documents even claim that the new bishop of Ierissos he appointed tried to bring the Holy Mountain under his authority. According to Zograf tradition Ivan Asen II was the monastery's most generous benefactor. The "Tale of the Zograf Martyrs" mentions "the tower of Tsar Asen", which burned together with the church, the books and the vessels during one of the attacks on the monastery.
3.The Patronage of Michael III Shishman
The Bulgarian-Byzantine peace of the 1320s brought Zograf new gains. In September 1318, at the request of his daughter Theodora — wife of the Bulgarian tsar — Michael IX Palaiologos ordered the return to the monastery of the estates seized by the Great Lavra. In July and September 1325 Andronikos II issued two chrysobulls in favour of Zograf at the request of "the exalted tsar of the Bulgarians" Michael Asen, securing the house's possession of Prevista.
4.Ivan Alexander's Charter (1342)
The monastery's most precious document is Ivan Alexander's charter of 1342 — a chrysobull on parchment still kept at Zograf. By it, with the consent of the young emperor John V Palaiologos, the tsar granted the house the village of Chantax in the lower Struma valley, then Byzantine territory. The signature reads: "John Alexander, in Christ God faithful tsar and autocrat of all the Bulgarians and Greeks" — with the epithet "faithful", borrowed from Byzantine chancery practice.
The charter opens with praise of the Holy Mountain — a haven for the salvation of every Christian soul — which tradition held the Virgin had blessed as her garden. Among the "houses" there, raised by Greeks and Bulgarians, Serbs, Russians and Iberians, is that of St George Zograf, "long held" by the pious Bulgarian tsars, "grandfathers and great-grandfathers of my majesty". With this Ivan Alexander declares his continuity with the Asens.
5.Zograf and Bulgarian Letters
In the thirteenth century some of the most important Bulgarian books are linked with Zograf, such as the Radomir Psalter and the Dragan Menaion. In the fourteenth century the house's role grew still further: the future patriarch Euthymius stayed here and at the Great Lavra, and the copyists of the Holy Mountain produced dozens of books for libraries across the Orthodox Slavic world. A Zograf Apostle of 1358–1359 is among the manuscripts of Ivan Alexander's time.
The Serbian conquest of Macedonia put the house in a difficult position. In 1351, to damage Zograf in favour of the Serbian Hilandar, Stefan Dušan destroyed six of its charters, among them a Bulgarian one — probably Ivan Asen II's.